


Do you have a cup of coffee to spare?

by Butterfish



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Baseball, Childhood, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 08:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfish/pseuds/Butterfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alfred loves playing baseball - that's what everyone says anyway. But maybe it ain't so. As Arthur discovers Alfred's true passion, they start growing close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do you have a cup of coffee to spare?

When I was younger, Alfred Jones played for the local baseball-team. Though I had no interest in the sport, I often came to watch him practice, so that I could sketch his body as he bended his arms and flexed his muscles and worked his shirt sweaty. He was a true American beauty, and the golden hair and water-blue eyes charmed all the girls and made them braid their hair and put on their nicest dress whenever he played an important game. They all wanted to marry him, but he was 11 and not interested in anything but sport. I was 12 and hoped to become a professional cartoonist, and as Alfred was the most animated bloke in the area, he was the perfect guy to practice my skills on.

We all went to the same school and had lunch in the same cafeteria. The town we lived in was small, the sky above us always blue, and as time passed by and Alfred kept getting better, everyone talked about how we would soon be known for having bred Americas best baseball-player. We were all excited on his behalf. No one asked Alfred what he thought about it all. If you’re good at something, people just assume that you like it as well. But Alfred hated baseball.

We didn’t talk for years though we went to the same class. I was one of the quiet, shy boys, and he was a loud brute who would rather knock over the table than do his homework. Mostly the teachers let him do whatever pleased him, because they all knew that his true talent wasn’t to be found in his papers scribbled down on the backside of a bag from McD. I think they mostly let him pass class because they didn’t want to hold him inside school more than what was necessary. But they’d gotten it all wrong, and we’d all misunderstood whom Alfred really was. I came to realise that as I one day came across him reading in the library.

It was an early, Saturday morning in May, and I thought I was the only one in the building besides the librarians, so I was quite surprised as I suddenly found the best seat by the windows taken by someone. I didn’t recognise the soft, geeky sweater nor the big, blue jeans the person was wearing, and at first I thought it was just someone from another school who’d come to borrow a book, but then he put down his book, and I stared into Alfred’s face. He blinked at me. He was wearing glasses. I’d never before seen him wearing glasses.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I also said, and he moved a bit in the sofa.

“Do you want to sit down?” I nodded and sat down next to him. I shortly looked at his book. It was filled with long, complicated words and odd pictures. “What are you reading?”

“Just something about Monet,” I said and showed him my book.

“There are a lot of pictures in it,” he said.

“Monet was a painter,” I explained. “What are you reading?” He smiled and held up the book for me to see. On the front with big letters it said: DNA. “Is it biology?”

“Yeah. I love biology.” He turned a page in the book. I bit the inner of my cheek.

“I thought you loved baseball.”

“Baseball is boring,” he said and stopped at a page. “I only play because my dad keeps paying my membership fee at the club.”

“Why does he do that?”

“He wants me to be a star. Now, look,” he pointed to a picture, and I looked down at it. “This is the part I love the most. See?” He moved his finger across the picture. “This is how cells multiply. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Is it an actual photo?” He nodded, and I raised my brows. “Wow. That _is_ pretty cool.”

“I want to study biology when I get older,” he said. He looked at me, and I nodded slowly. “Can you keep that as a secret?”

“Of course. What will your dad think of it, though?”

“He’ll hate it,” Alfred answered. Then he turned the page again and started to explain the next picture to me. I didn’t really understand much of what he was saying, but he seemed so enthusiastic that I just let him speak. Afterwards, I told him about my favourite painters and what they had meant to art history. He listened with a smile on his lips, and I felt I’d found someone I could actually talk with. It was a thrilling feeling, and soon we met up every Saturday morning to discuss books and share interests. We never spoke of baseball or sport in general. I think avoiding the subject made Alfred quite happy.

As grade school ended most of us continued on to the local high school. Alfred wanted to go there as well and study biology and math, but his dad simply wouldn’t have it. He said that he’d been paying for Alfred to play baseball for so many years, so that he better continue it and become a star! Everyone in the town thought so as well. As Alfred protested, people talked about what a whining, little brat he’d turned into. “No wonder - the boy has no brain to think with!” they said. I kept quiet, because I’d promised Alfred that everything we talked about stayed between us. But it hurt me to listen to their gossip.

All through summer vacation, Alfred didn’t show up at the library. The first three weeks I waited for him to come, but soon I learned that his dad had forbidden for him to go out unless it was to train. Down at the field we could hear him hit off balls in the evening. Sometimes the girls went down to watch him, and they all praised him and told him that he was going to be great doing all that practice. Every time they cheered him on, he smiled at them softly and thanked them for their support. I knew that on the inside, he was heartbroken and crying all the time. Still I wasn’t allowed to say anything.

Instead of meeting up at the library, I started walking with him to and from practice. His dad didn’t want to drive him anymore since he could train his legs walking, and though it was quite a distance, I didn’t mind walking it as long as Alfred was by my side. When we walked together, he repeated everything he remembered from the biology books. He told me that his dad had thrown out the books he had, so he couldn’t study anymore, but still he stubbornly repeated what he knew in his head not to forget.

“You must be tired of hearing the same things again and again,” he sighed one day, but I shook my head.

“I think you could become a great biology teacher,” I said. It made him cry, and I comforted him and told him that it would all work out in the end. Sadly, we both knew that nothing would ever be okay. Alfred hated baseball, and he just wanted to be left alone with his books. I think he was the unhappiest boy in town while everyone thought him to be the luckiest.

“He’ll be famous and rich,” my mom always said as if those were the two goals to strive for in life. Having met Alfred, though, I knew that being happy was way more important.

Years passed by and Alfred’s name started to be well-known. He played his way to fame, and soon he didn’t have the time to be around friends anymore, because baseball took up most of his time. As I finished high school, he moved from town as he’d signed a contract with an actual team. We didn’t even get to say goodbye. His dad had already sold the house and moved the furniture to their new place up north. Alfred had left me a note. All it said was ‘See you‘.

I grew up, but I never fully forgot about Alfred. His face was constantly on the front of some magazine or it popped up during a commercial for a new energy-drink. I read a lot of interviews he’d given, but in none of them did he talk about being unhappy. Whenever he was asked about his childhood, he just described it as the happiest time of his life. He never mentioned my name either. I supposed I belonged in his past. Still I just hoped that he’d finally become happy. I wasn’t doing all that well myself. Being a cartoonist was not something I could achieve, because quite frankly I was horrible at drawing. Instead I’d studied English and become a professor at a university, and every day I spent correcting papers as life passed me by. I had a girlfriend now and then, but I never put enough time into the relationship to have it become serious. I think I ruined it for myself in purpose, though I never really thought about it. My excuse was that I wasn’t one for commitments. I surprised myself by saying it, because I could taste the lie in each and every of my words, but I didn’t know how else to explain it.

Alfred never explained himself at all. One day he just quit his contract and disappeared. It was three months after his dad’s death, and the medias excused Alfred’s disappearance with grief, but I knew very well that the guy wouldn’t shed one tear over his old man’s grave. He’d made it to the top in baseball in a few years, and now he left it just as quickly. He was rich. He could do whatever he wanted to do. I just assumed he had moved to Europe to study biology as some university where no one knew his name, but instead he spent money on a plane ticket to come down south to see me. As I opened my door that early Saturday morning in May, I hadn’t expected to find Alfred standing outside.

“Hey Arthur,” he said casually as if he’d just been away for five minutes to go pick up the laundry, “do you have a cup of coffee to spare?”

Two weeks later I quit my job and moved with Alfred to England. I have never been a drastic man, but I believe that when happiness offers you a ride, you don’t turn down the offer because you have a pay check coming in. Alfred had saved plenty of his cheques to keep us going for a few years, and as he started studying biology as soon as we’d settled down, we really had no doubt about how to make it in the future. We were in our late twenties, in love and inseparable. Everything was as they should’ve been ten years earlier, but we decided not to speak of the past, and when people asked us for how long we’ve been together, we said that we’d been a couple since childhood. It was not even partly true, but to Alfred it was the only truth there existed, and when he smiled so brightly whenever I said it, I came to believe that honesty in that sense of the word wasn’t important in our relationship. Seeing him smiling is. And now he smiles every day. I think he’s happy. I know for sure that I am.


End file.
